Re-Capping the “Year of Excellence”

16082008

The year of “Excellence” began for me on Dec 01 of 2007. It was the “theme” I’d chosen for the year as a result of the quality I recognized I needed to face and take to new depths. The partner or complementary quality that came along with that was “slowing down, not rushing thru the process”. The physical endeavor I’d chosen to coincide with and use as a vehicle to drive this development was kettlebell lifting as taught by the American Kettlebell Club (AKC).For this background in greater detail visit “Excellence”.

Now to recap the year itself. Just as I’d chosen to make this commitment for the year, my back went out on me (see “Be Careful What You Wish For…..). I was relegated to joint mobility (learned thru Dragon Door and Steve Maxwell) and yoga . It was helping, but still couldn’t really get the kettlebells going.Then about a month later, I hurt my back again, ironically thru a weight training course I was taking towards my certification as a personal trainer.

Side note: I never actually made the official announcement or wrote about the transition to becoming a fitness professional, but I did. Around 5 months into Gym Jane, I’d decided it was time to take the step out of the old career and discover the one I needed to step into. I was just going to take it easy (from my usually driven ways) in finding that and do some other stuff in the meantime. It was in fact my wife and sister-in-law who suggested and encouraged getting into the personal training. I had never even really seen that as an option. All of this I just did out of a personal passion and interest. But I took their nudge to heart, meditated on it and took the plunge. Now I can’t see myself anywhere else.

With this second bout of brief debilitation, it sunk in fully “okay, don’t push it”. More joint mobility and yoga. Then 2 weeks prior to heading down to San Diego for my certification as a Kettlebell Lifting Coach with the AKC, I started to train the bells, albeit light, and just focused on technique. Went to the Cert, which was awesome! And my back survived, for the most part. After returning from San Diego, I realized I really needed to address this back thing in greater depth, as I was not going to be able to progress with where things were at. I began speaking with health professionals about potential solutions (no not surgery or anything like that).

Then a door opened, which, funny enough, I’d been fighting to keep closed. When I went to the Las Vegas workshop, I was introduced to the name Scott Sonnon and his company RMAX International. I’d started reading up on them (as Scott is an advisor for the AKC) and got really excited about what I saw. It all made so much sense, I wanted to dive right in. NNNNNNOO! STOP! This is the year of excellence and doing one thing (which was Kettlebells). I’m not going to allow myself to get sucked in. But after San Diego and getting on the coaches forum, I was seeing his stuff everywhere. “Well,” I thought “if he’s a part of all this, I should be allowed to learn more, to complete the package that is Kettlebell lifting a la AKC.” So I dug a little deeper and was guided to beginning with Intu-Flow, the joint mobility routine composed and created by Sonnon himself. And that’s what I did.

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I’ve had a similar experience to yours. I’ve been lifting bells for almost a year and Scott’s name kept coming up all over the show. I eventually decided to get out my credit card and invested in Intuflow and some Prasara material. I’m really glad I did – Scott’s work is a perfect compliment to the kettlebell work and is helping me to recover and stay loose between kettlebell sessions. Regards. Johan

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